Urbs Aeterna

The neighborhood in Rome where I'm staying

 After a short layover in Brussels, I arrived yesterday in Rome, where I will spend most of my time during this Christmas holiday  After spending the morning gathering energies, I (and JD) set out for the city.  The main thing we did was visit St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City.  St. Peter's is pretty much the most spectacular thing that human hands have ever created.  There is so much detail, it would be impossible for pictures, words, or even video to give you an idea of what it is like.  For this reason, I tried not to take many pictures, and to simply take in the magnificence.  The Pieta is there, and lived up to it's hype in every way.  The sculpture is so detailed, so life-like.  Despite the tourist presence, there are enough places in St. Peter's that are quieter and more prayerful.  It was nice to spend a good amount of time praying there, including at the tomb of Blessed John Paul II.  We also saw the Pope's massive Christmas tree in the expansive, wonderful St. Peter's square.

The Christmas tree in St. Peter's Square

Following St. Peter's was a walk around Rome, including to the Piazza Navona, with its fountains and Christmas vendors.  The city certainly has a different feel in comparison to the others I've visited this semester.  The architecture is, dare I say, Romanesque and you can't walk two minutes without running into a beautiful church, that would be well worth spending a long time in were it in any other city.  The climate too, is different from what I'm used to.  Whereas the flora on the British Isles looks really similar to the Midwestern United States, Rome looks much more...Mediterranean.  It's kind of how I expected Italy to look, except there it is in person.

For whatever reason, I feel a lot more comfortable not knowing Italian in Rome, then I did not knowing French even in Paris.  I suspect this is due to a combination of factors.  One is that English is the default tourist language here.  In France, I think they still fancy that French is widely enough spoken to suffice for many.  Generally there are more signs in English in Rome than there were in Paris, and, at least at St. Peter's, most staff members spoke in English, rather than Italian, to tourists.  The other reason I think feel more comfortable is that now I much more experience at navigating cities than when I was in France, and have the confidence that things will work out.

St. Peter's

Bridge over the Tiber

My goal is to keep little updates coming this week, so stay tuned.

Holidays and such

Thanksgiving happened, as you know, a few weeks ago.  This year was my first time being away from family and being outside of the United States.  Needless to say, Thanksgiving is not celebrated in the United Kingdom.  The shear ordinariness of the day was strange; classes carried on as usual and people went to work.  However, the people who know us here did go out of the way to make the day special.  There was a great outpouring of support, because they recognized how important the holiday is to us.  The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, one of my teachers gave me (and my compatriots KS and JD) a pumpkin pie that he had baked himself when we went to his class.  I found that incredibly thoughtful.  I hadn't had pumpkin pie in a long time.  That night at the seminary, dinner was extra nice in acknowledgment of Thanksgiving.  During grace, the rector prayed for the American people.  The wine was brought out, and we had one of the best pumpkin pies I've ever had for dessert.  I also learned that pumpkin pie is quite rare here.  Many people did not recognize the dish, and still more had never tried it before.  I must say, it was appraised quite favorably.  On Thanksgiving Day itself, my compatriots and I joined the Notre Dame London program in the evening for their Thanksgiving meal.  Turkey, potatoes, stuffing, cranberries, and pie were all there, accompanying the wine which a priest gave us to bring.  The students cooked the meal themselves and did a great job.  I figure it was almost everyone's first time away from family for the holiday.  I felt it was fitting sign of my generation's coming of age.  We managed to keep the old traditions alive ourselves.  The future is going to be alright.  Although we couldn't be home for this holiday, it was great to spend it with other Americans and other Domers.

Standing in two hemispheres at once

The Friday after, I crossed another item off of my total nerd bucket list.  Taking London's lovely public transport, I spent the day in Greenwich.  Greenwich (pronounced: Grenitch) is most famous for being the location of the Royal Observatory, and home of Greenwich Meantime Time.  As one fascinated with date-time standards, this was a fantastic day trip.  The prime meridian was defined by the location of the telescope there in the observatory, which was used to calculate Greenwich Mean Time based on the stars.  In the 19th century, the meridian was actually moved 6 meters East, because they got a new telescope.  In the courtyard, there is a line showing the meridian and alongside it are the longitudes of various cities worldwide.  I got to stand straddling the line, a foot in each hemisphere.  At noon, I went back and stood on the line, so I could see the sun directly in the Southern sky. (A pedantic point:  On mean solar time, the sun isn't necessarily directly in the South at noon, it was close enought for my puposes.  One should note the heights of my obsession: I waited until after Daylight Savings Time ended to make this trip.)  There was also an interesting museum on the 'longitude problem' there.  For accurate navigation (and especially for a powerful maritime nation like England), an accurate way of determining longitude at sea was needed.  In 1714, the British Government offered a precursor to the x-prize: £20,000 (over a million today) for solving the longitude problem.  The two main strategies were either extremely accurate charts of the stars or an accurate timepiece that would work at sea.  In 1772, John Harrison was awarded the remaining prize money for his fourth attempt at an accurate timekeeper.  In the museum, you can actually see all of Harrison's timekeepers.  Following the observatory visit, we also saw the, the Maritime Museum, and the Queen's House, which is houses a collection of mainly maritime paintings.  I didn't find too much that was noteworthy, although there was a room in the Maritime Museum that smelled exactly like the sea, and I don't know how they did it or if we were just imagining it.

The telescope which defined the meridian

December started with Wicked on Thursday. (Awesome, and a good deal on the best seats in the house day of thanks to being a student.)  Friday saw Oxford.  My compatriots an I met up with a priest we know studying there.  We got to go into the Bodleian Library, and he showed us around the older colleges of Oxford.  That evening he took us for a pint at the King's Arms and then to a really good Indian Restaurant.  Curry and the like are quite popular in England.  While I don't think I'll go out searching for Indian food, at least this experience showed me that if done well, it can actually taste good.  That evening we went to the anthropology museum, and saw some shrunken heads among other things.  The museum was interesting, but the most fascinating thing for me was that we had to wait in line to get in.  That's right: people were waiting in line to get into a museum which was at capacity on a Friday night.  Only in Oxford.  To be fair, it was part of a winter festival taking place all over the city.  It was nice to visit Oxford, and to see some of the haunts of the likes of Tolkien and Lewis.  However, despite having much of the same architecture, I think I liked Cambridge better.  Oxford has more of a city attached to it, so there is more non-awesome stuff mixed in with the awesome.

Christ's Church Cathedral, Oxford

On the seventh, we had the annual Christmas Party here at the seminary.  We sung carols, drank mulled wine, ate mince pies, and stood around a bonfire.  Everyone contributed a little to the entertainment that evening.  I think my favorites were the native African songs some of the African seminarians sung.  My compatriots and I sang 'Mele Kalikimaka' to bring a little flavor of America (although none of us are from Hawaii).  It was a great evening and another place where the sameness and difference of being in England came through.  It's the same celebration of Christmas, but some differences to the way that celebration is realized.

The Friday following, we crossed off London Bridge and the more famous Tower Bridge from our tourist list.  We also walked by the Tour of London (where Sts. Thomas Moore and John Fisher were executed) and stopped for a pint and the famous Anchor Pub.



Me on London Bridge with Tower Bridge in view

Now I've finally gotten to the point where I can talk in terms of last week.  This past Thursday was the Christmas Dinner here, the last meal all the students and staff here could have together before parting for Christmas break.  It was a traditional English Christmas dinner.  The most important thing to note food-wise was the famous Christmas Pudding.  It was basically a dried fruit lump, with lots of sugar mixed in and custard poured on top of it.  Among constituent fruits are figs, hence the term 'figgy pudding' in the Christmas carol.  It was really good.  As far as I can tell, this defines English Christmas about as much as pumpkin pie American Thanksgiving.  An essential part of the table setting was 'Chrismas crackers.'  They vaguely resemble a large sweet in a wrapper.  Inside is a small trinket.  One person pulls on each end to open them, and there is a thing inside which makes a 'pop' when you open the cracker.  In between the courses, there were musical selections by various parties.  My favorite were classic Christmas songs sung in the 'extra-ordinary form,' that is Latin (and one, Rudolph the Red-nosed Raindeer in Greek), by the priests on staff.  We also had a visit from Santa Clause, from whom I got English Teas.  At the social afterwards, people opened gifts from their Secret Santa.  All told it was a wonderful evening, a great atmosphere of community and celebration.

Next up is Christmas in the Eternal City.